She's got (2) daughter(s) and you're just not coping...

Ahh, dating with children, a whole different ballgame. A game I did not expect to ever have to play. Well, that's not entirely true, I remember a moment when Sylvia was a baby back in our house in Fargo where it suddenly dawned on me that my marriage was not going to last. I was standing in the dining room and STBX was in the kitchen. I don't think we were fighting or anything. I think I just realized that I was the only one who cared about it and I just couldn't save it all by myself. No matter what Dr. Phil says. Because if you don't believe a single other word I say you have to believe that I tried. Hard. That's another big reason I'm so defensive about the divorce and everything, because people just don't realize how hard I tried to make it work. But I still never thought about what would happen after. Actually being single again with two small children. I've been working on adjusting to that for the last 14 months.

I'm struggling to find a balance between me with kids and me without kids. At all other times in my life it's been pretty much one or the other. Now I need to find some happy medium that will be healthy for all of us. Easier said than done. While having children has certainly changed my life and probably made me a more mature and responsible person, I don't really feel any different on the inside. I am still just me, the same me that was dating without kids 7 years ago and now feels that things shouldn't be any different. It would probably be easier if I dated some guy that had his own kids but with the exception of Bachelor #1 that just hasn't happened yet. I worry about guys with kids just looking for some woman to step in and take care of their kids for them. This is kind of what I expected STBX to do, although he hasn't yet as far as I know. I didn't want to date anyone with children when I was single before, but that was because I wanted to have my own children and share those 'firsts' with someone. It's funny to think about that now because what actually happened was so different from my expectations. There was not much sharing involved, I did pretty much everything all by myself. So maybe I can still hope to have that one day. I regret being so narrow minded.
Being a single parent is hard. And lonely. There's a reason it takes two people to make a baby. It's a lot of work and while they are great company, it was nice to have someone to talk to about them and other things at the end of the day. I don't know how people do it when the other parent is not involved at all, hopefully they have a good support system around them because you definitely need it.
I'm sure there are even bigger problems ahead. Like when I actually find someone serious and it comes to the time to introduce him to my children. (which I wouldn't do until several months had passed in case you were wondering) That should be pretty interesting. About a month ago Sylvia was telling me she wanted another brother or sister and I told her if that happened it would be because Mommy or Daddy would be with someone else. I thought it was innocent enough at the time, I certainly didn't go into any details, but she started crying. So I think when it actually does happen she will be upset about it, at least at first. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it...